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I'd like to start off my blog by saying that it's definitely going to be about what happened in the MOTY feedback thread. I figured I should make a blog about this, because it truly is saddening when people feel hurt because they haven't been voted for, or anything like that. Bear with me here, I really suck at wording things, but I will try to the best of my ability to communicate my thoughts on this issue.

When I joined PC, I was pretty much a nobody. But truth be told, that's the hard fact of the internet forum world: you join a certain place, and most likely you know next to no one there, and they don't know you. It's a frightening world, and finding a place to fit in is the worst part of it. This is why we have a "welcoming committee" here at PC(if you'd rather put it that way), as well as the PC Adoption center. The Adoption center was established so that mentors can help mentees be familiar with PC, and heck, if the mentors wanted to, give them that extra mile so that they can "fit in".

...But you might ask, what does "fitting in" mean? What does it take to fit in with the rest of the PC crowd? I cannot and will not give a definition, because that is completely subjective depending on who you ask, but I firmly believe that there hardly is a "fitting in". As long as one posts around threads, and chats casually with our members, that's all the fitting in that's really needed. And heck, we can be crazy at times, and that's fine too! You really experience the closeness of it all once you stick around for months and even years at a time, establishing relationships and friendships and the whole nine yards.

What does this have to do with MOTY? Simple. When I read Gavin's thoughts on his disagreement as far as fully-privatized voting, he said something that was key, and that remained in my thoughts for a good long time. He said that it would take away from the good-natured environment that MOTY was supposed to bring. But what happened to that good nature that was supposed to be MOTY? Maybe I'm overanalyzing things(and if I am, forgive me), but why does it seems like the MOTY feedback was "unpopular vs popular members" or something like that. And in that question, I use "unpopular" -very- loosely. What considers someone unpopular at PC? Not knowing their name enough? Let me jump back on the first paragraph here(and part of the second), and hopefully I haven't lost you guys yet.

When you join a community, you are faced with a struggle. The fact of the matter is that, if you don't already have connections or prior knowledge of someone in that community that can help you with your way around, you're on your own. You have to adjust to the atmosphere completely on your own, get to know the posters and just about everything else you can name. It's a scary world out there in foruming, and don't even get me started on popularity. But why did popularity become such a thing? What is the ultimate reward for being popular? Social approval? More respect?

Coming from someone that is "well-known"(I daresay even "popular" to some extent), I can definitely tell you that, as I already stated in the MOTY feedback thread, I hardly got votes, but at the same time, I don't mind. MOTY is supposed to be fun, and sometimes you'll earn votes you won't really expect, and maybe you won't make it into the top nominees for certain categories, but whatever happened to "it's the thought that counts"? Has that just disappeared, and have we just struggled so hard to be popular just to be accepted within PC?

...I apologize, I seem to have gone into a tangent. Oh well.

I respect and value each and every single member here. Everyone has their flaws, and everyone has their individual quirks that makes them the person that they are. Every one of you guys are special and gifted, and honestly, you don't need a yearly "popularity" contest in order to prove that to anyone. As long as you have fun and talk to friends here about various topics of interest, why does some contest that pops up once a year even matter? It's not like the winner gets awarded modship, they just get awarded an emblem and then everyone calls it a day. The whole thing gets forgotten about in a month or two, tops(at least, that's how long I remember last year's MOTY lasting. I could be wrong, though).

I don't know if what I'm saying here even matters or would do anything, but I wanted to vent my feelings out in this blog, I suppose, so do what you will with it. When joining a community, popularity doesn't even come near you. What comes near you is fitting snuggly in, and having friends, and having a good time. Popularity only comes into the equation because of a strengthened desire to be accepted amongst a group of sort, or possibly for self-esteem. Note that this is something that I believe, and I know that there are many reasons as well as other things that factor into various members' desire to win MOTY. There are exceptions for a reason.

Anyway, thanks for reading through all of this, and I'd like to hear some of your thoughts ^^; If something doesn't make sense, I'll be more than happy to clarify. I just have rather poor wording with things, as I've had some partial difficulty typing up this blog.

Comments

This is a nice entry, though I disagree with one thing --

Quote:

When you join a community, you are faced with a struggle. The fact of the matter is that, if you don't already have connections or prior knowledge of someone in that community that can help you with your way around, you're on your own.

Who says members need to find their way around by themselves? Just because they don't necessarily know anything about the forum or are acquainted with any members right off the bat doesn't mean they should be left on the side of the road to fend for themselves. That's not the right thing to put a member through, which is what a lot of our members feel, hence something like we have - the Adoption Center. People are able to take new members under their wings and show them the ropes of individual forum sections and the like. This is a fantastic way to make members feel like they are not being alienated.

Anyway, that's kind of off-topic with what you were trying to convey, but I do agree with everything else written here. n__n

Exactly, and I agree with that. I suppose I misworded that, and I really meant to say what might be the perspective of one that is new to the community, and what might be going through their mind. No one should be left to fight for themselves, and we have resources here at PC to help fix that. n_n

I know that when I joined other forums, I certainly felt that way at first! But once you easy into things, it's really not so much of a big deal anymore, but yeah. xD;

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